If God have work for him in th' ends of th' earth, And how God hath made him an instrument To sum up all, in this he still went hence, He's happy, happy thrice: unhappy we The death of Samuel Stone introduces EDWARD, the son of Peter Bulkley, just mentioned. He succeeded his father in his pastoral charge at Concord. SAMUEL STONE was born at Hartford, England, educated at Cambridge, and came to Plymouth in the same ship with Cotton and Hooker. He accompanied the latter to Hartford, which was named after his native place, where he acted as his associate for fourteen years, and for sixteen more as his successor. The latter part of his life was embittered by a dispute between himself and the ruling elder on a speculative point of divinity, which led to a division of the church. He printed a sermon and left behind him two works in MS., one of which was a body of divinity, "a rich treasure," says Cotton Mather, which has often been transcribed by the vast pains of our candidates for the ministry." Neither has been printed. A THRENODIA UPON OUR CHURCHES SECOND DARK ECLIPSE, A stone more than the Ebenezer fam'd; As would not fail Goliah's front to hit; A stone, an antidote, that brake the course Of gangrene errour, by convincing force; A squared stone became Christ's building rare. As 'live, was Hartford's life; dead, death is fear'd. E. B. (probably Edward Bulkley). These lines, remarkable for their quaint simplicity, on John Wilson, are attributed to JONATHAN MITCHELL, a graduate of Harvard of 1647, and the successor of Shepard at Cambridge in 1650. He died in 1668, at the age of forty-four. UPON THE DEATH OF THAT REVEREND, AGED, EVER HONOURED. Is fall'n a great and good man too, A Prince, I might have said as well: In Englands both, from youth to age; When yet in real worth high-grown: When God so much had for him done. In love, a none-such; as the sand, With largest heart God did him fill, A bounteous mind, an open hand, Affection sweet, all sweet'ning still. Love was his life; he dy'd in love; Love doth embalm his memory; Love is his bliss and joy, above With God now who is love for ay: A comprehending charity To all, where ought appear'd of good; And yet in zeal was none more high Against th' apparent serpent's brood. Gaius, our host, ah now is gone! Can we e'er look for such another? But yet there is a mansion, Where we may all turn in together. Where his blest soul is gathered; Sure heaven will the sweeter be, (If there we ever come to stay) For him, and others such as he. Mitchell, in his turn, is soon commemorated by JOHN SHERMAN, a non-conformist emigrant from England, who officiated at Watertown and New Haven as a clergyman, and took an active part as civil magistrate. He was a mathematician, and published for many years an Almanac, well garnished with moral reflections. He was married twice, and was the father of twenty-six children. He died at the age of sixty-two, in 1675. AN EPITAPH upon the deplored deATH OF THAT SUPERENINENT MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL, MR. JONATHAN MITCHELL.. Here lies the darling of his time, Mitchell expired in his prime; Who four years short of forty-seven, Was found full ripe and pluck'd for heaven. J. S.* SCOTTow, a J. S. has also been supposed to refer to JOSHUA merchant of Boston. The only Guided by these initials only, we are inclined to attribute the lines to which they are annexed, to the Rev. John Sherman, (Davis's note.) ANNE BRADSTREET. dates known in reference to his life, are those of his admission to church membership in the Old Church, Boston, on "the nineteenth of the third month," 1639, with his brother Thomas, as the 66 sonnes of our sister Thomasine Scottowe," the record of the birth of seven of his children, the eldest of whom was born, September 30, 1646; the date of his will, June 23, 1696; and of its probate, March 3, 1698. His name is, however, of frequent recurrence in the town records, and he appears to have maintained throughout his long life an honorable position. He was the author of Old Men's fears for their own declensions, mixed with fears of their and posterities further falling off from New Published England's Primitive Constitution. by some of Boston's old Planters, and some other. 1691. pp. 26. It contains a vigorously written presentation of what the writer regarded as the degeneracy of his times. NEW ENGLAND'S DECLINE. Our spot is not the spot of God's children; the old Puritan garb, and gravity of heart, and habit lost and ridiculed into strange and fantastic fashions and attire, naked backs and bare breasts, and forehead, if not of the whorish woman, yet so like unto it, as would require a more than ordinary spirit of discernment to distinguish; the virgins dress and matrons veil, showing their power on their heads, because of the holy angels, turned into powdered foretops and top-gallant attire, not becoming the Christian, but the comedian assembly, not the church, but the stage play, where the devil sits regent in his dominion, as he once boasted out of the mouth of a demoniack, church member, he there took possession of, and made this response to the church, supplicating her deliverance; so as now we may and must say, New England is not to be found it is become in New England, nor Boston in Boston; a lost town (as at first it was called); we must now cry out, our leanness, our leanness, our apostacy, our apostacy, our Atheism, spiritual idolatry, adultery, formality in worship, carnal and vain confidence in church privileges, forgetting of God our rock, and multitude of other abominations. Also a This tract was reprinted, with the omission of the address to the reader, by D. Gookin, in 1749. In 1694, A Narrative of the Planting of the Massachusetts Colony, Anno 1628, with the Lord's signal presence the first Thirty years. caution from New England's Apostle, the great Cotton, how to escape the calamity, which might befal them or their posterity, and confirmed by the evangelist Norton, with prognostics from the famous Dr. Owen, concerning the fate of these Churches, and Animadversions upon the anger of God in sending of evil angels among us. lished by Old Planters, the authors of the Old Men's Fears, a pamphlet of seventy-eight pages, appeared, much in the style of the author's former productions.* ANNE BRADSTREET. Pub It is with a fine flourish of his learned trump of fame that Cotton Mather, in his Magnalia, introduces Anne Bradstreet, who wrote the first volume of poems published in New England. "If Memoirs of Scottow, Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Second Series, iv. 10. the rare learning of a daughter was not the least of those bright things which adorned no less a A Bradstreet Judge of England than Sir Thomas More; it must now be said, that a Judge of New England, namely, Thomas Dudley, Esq., had a daughter (besides other children) to be a crown unto him. Reader, America justly admires the learned women of the other hemisphere. She has heard of those that were witnesses to the old professors of all philosophy: she hath heard of Hippatia, who formerly taught the liberal arts; and of Sarocchia, who, more lately, was very often the moderatrix in the disputations of the learned men of Rome: she has been told of the three Corinnas, which equalled, if not excelled, the most celebrated poets of their time she has been told of the Empress Eudocia, who composed poetical paraphrases on various parts of the Bible; and of Rosnida, who wrote the lives of holy men; and of Pamphilja, who wrote other histories unto the life: the writings of the most renowned Anna Maria SchurBut she now man, have come over unto her. prays that into such catalogues of authoresses as Beverovicius, Hottinger, and Voetius, have given unto the world, there may be a room now given unto Madam Ann Bradstreet, the daughter of our Governor Dudley, and the consort of our Governor Bradstreet, whose poems, divers times printed, have afforded a grateful entertainment unto the ingenious, and a monument for her memory beyond the stateliest marbles." Thomas Dudley, the father of this gifted lady, had been a soldier of the Protestant wars of Elizabeth in the Low Countries, and afterwards retrieved the fortunes of the Earl of Lincoln by his He came faithful stewardship of his estates. over to Massachusetts with a party of Puritan refugees, among whom was his son-in-law, Simon Bradstreet, from the Earl's county, in 1630; and four years afterwards, succeeded Winthrop as Governor of the Colony. In addition to his various valorous and religious qualities, he would appear from an Epitaph, of which Mather gives us a poetical translation, to have been something of a book-worm. In books a prodigal, they say; Of histories of church and priest, So that the daughter may have inherited some of her learning. Morton, in his "Memorial," has preserved these lines by Dudley, found in his pocket after his death, which exhibit the severity of his creed and practice. Dim eyes, deaf ears, cold stomach shew My soul with Christ, my body dead; Let men of God in courts and churches watch, O'er such as do a toleration hatch; Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice, If men be left, and otherwise combine, The cares of married life would not appear to have interrupted Mistress Bradstreet's acquisitions, for she was married at the age of sixteen, and her poetry was written in the early part of her life. As she had eight children, and addressed herself particularly to their education,* the cradle and the Muse must have been competitors for her attention. Her reading, well stuffed with the facts of ancient history, was no trifle for the memory; but we may suppose the mind to have been readily fixed on books, and even pedantic learning to have been a relief, where there were no diversions to distract when the household labors of the day were over. Then there is the native passion for books, which will find its own opportunities. The little volume of her poems, published in London, in 1650, is entitled The Tenth Muse, lately sprung up in America; or, Several Poems, compiled with great variety of wit and learning, full of delight: wherein especially is contained a complete Discourse and Description of the Four Elements, Constitutions, Ages of Man, Seasons of the Year. Together with an Exact Epitome of the Four Monarchies, viz., the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, Roman. Also a Dialogue between Old England and New concerning the late troubles, with divers other pleasant and serious Poems. By a Gentlewoman in those parts. A more complete edition was published in Boston in 1678, which contains her Contemplations, a moral and descriptive poem, the best specimen of her pen; The Flesh and the Spirit, a dialogue, and several poems on family incidents, left among her private papers. The formal natural history and historical topics, which compose the greater part of her writings, are treated with doughty resolution, but without much regard to poetical equality. The plan is simple. The elements of the world, fire, air, earth, and water; the humors of the constitution, the choleric, the sanguine, the melancholy, and phlegmatic; childhood, youth, manhood, and age; spring, summer, autumn, and winter, severally come up and say what they can of themselves, of their powers and opportunities, good and evil, with the utmost fairness. The four ancient monarchies are catalogued in a similar way. It is not to be denied, that, if there is not much poetry in these productions, there is considerable information. For the readers of those times they con She records the number in the posthumous lines In Reference to her Children. 23d June, 1656: I had eight birds hatch't in the nest; I nurst them up with pain and care, For cost nor labor did I spare, Till at the last they felt their wing, There are two pages more in continuation of this simile. tained a very respectable digest of the old historians, and a fair proportion of medical and scientific knowledge. It is amusing to see this mother in Israel writing of the Spleen with the zest of an anatomist. If any doubt this truth, whence this should come, Show them the passage to the duodenum. The good lady must have enjoyed the perusal of Phineas Fletcher's Purple Island, a dissecting theatre in a book, which appeared in 1633. Her descriptions are extremely literal. She writes as if under bonds to tell the whole truth, which she does without any regard to the niceties or scruples of the imagination. Thus her account of childhood begins at the beginning somewhat earlier than a modern poetess would tax the memory of the muse; and she thinks it necessary to tell us in her account of winter, how, Beef, brawn and pork, are now in great'st request, And solid'st meats our stomachs can digest. When we come upon any level ground in these poems, and are looking round to enjoy the prospect, we may prepare ourselves for a neighboring pitfall. In "Summer" we set forth trippingly afield Now go those frolic swains, the shepherd lad, In the cool streams they labor with delight, With a little more taste our poetess might have been a happy describer of nature, for she had a warm heart and a hearty view of things. The honesty of purpose which mitigates her pedantry, sometimes displays itself in a purer simplicity. The account of the flowers and the little bird in Spring might find a place in the sincere, delicate poems of Dana, who has a family relationship with the poetess. The primrose pale, and azure violet, Among the verdurous grass hath nature set, In the historic poems, the dry list of dynasties is sometimes relieved by a homely unction and humor in the narrative, as in the picture of the progress of Alexander and the Persian host of Darius-though much of this stuff is sheer doggrel, as in the Life and Death of Semiramis : She like a brave virago play'd the rex, Forty-two years she reign'd, and then she dy'd, If sighs for "imbecility" can get pardon for bad verses, we should think only of Mrs. Bradstreet's good ones for her poems are full of these deprecatory acknowledgments. The literary father of Mrs. Bradstreet was Silver-tongued Sylvester, whose translation of Du Bartas was a popular book among Puritan readers ANNE BRADSTREET. at the beginning of the seventeenth century. His quaint volumes, which will be remembered as favorites with Southey's simple-minded Dr. Daniel Dove, were both poetical and devout; and if they led our author's taste astray, they also strengthened her finest susceptibilities. She has left a warm poem "in his honor," in which there is an original and very pretty simile. My Muse unto a child, I fitly may compare, The Authoresse was a right Du Bartas girle. Mrs. Bradstreet was also a reader of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, which she has characterized with more minuteness than others who have written upon it, in an Elegy which she penned forty-eight years after the fall of that mirror of knighthood at Zutphen. Ann Bradstreet died 16th September, 1672, at the age of sixty. That she had not altogether survived her poetical reputation in England, is shown by an entry in Edward Phillips's (the nephew of Milton) Theatrum Poetarum, in 1674, where the title of her Poems is given, and their memory pronounced "not yet wholly extinct." A third edition, reprinted from the second, appeared in 1758. CONTEMPLATIONS. Some time now past in the Autumnal Tide, When Phoebus wanted but one hour to bed, I wist not what to wish, yet sure thought I, Whose power and beauty by his works we know. Then on a stately oak I cast mine eye, Whose ruffling top the clouds seem'd to aspire; How long since thou wast in thine infancy? Thy strength, and stature, more thy years admire. Hath hundred winters past since thou wast born? Or thousands since thou brak'st thy shell of horn, If so, all these as nought, eternity doth scorn. VOL. 1.-4 Then higher on the glittering sun I gaz'd, Whose beams were shaded by the leavie tree, The more I look'd, the more I grew amaz'd, And softly said, what glory's like to thee? Soul of this world, this Universe's eye, No wonder, some made thee a deity; Had I not better known (alas), the same had L Thou as a bridegroom from thy chamber rushest, Thy heart from death and dulness doth revive: Thy swift annual, and diurnal course, Thy daily straight, and yearly oblique path, Thy pleasing fervor, and thy scorching force, All mortals here the feeling knowledge hath. Thy presence makes it day, thy absence night, Quaternal seasons caused by thy might: Hail creature, full of sweetness, beauty and delight. Art thou so full of glory, that no eye Hath strength, thy shining rayes once to behold And is thy splendid throne erect so high? As to approach it, can no earthly mould. How full of glory then must thy Creator be, Who gave this bright light luster unto thee! Admir'd, ador'd for ever, be that Majesty. Silent alone, where none or saw, or heard, In pathful paths I lead my wandering feet, I heard the merry grasshopper then sing, Shall creatures abject, thus their voices raise? And calls back months and years that long since It makes a man more aged in conceit, Than was Methuselah, or's grand-sire great; treat. Sometimes in Eden fair he seems to be, Sees glorious Adam there made Lord of all, Fancyes the Apple, dangle on the Tree, That turn'd his Sovereign to a naked thral. Who like a miscreant's driven from that place, To get his bread with pain, and sweat of face: A penalty impos'd on his backsliding race. Here sits our Grandame in retired place, And in her lap, her bloody Cain new born, The weeping imp oft looks her in the face, Bewails his unknown hap, and fate forlorn; His mother sighs, to think of Paradise, And how she lost her bliss, to be more wise, Believing him that was, and is, Father of lyes. Here Cain and Abel come to sacrifice, Fruits of the earth, and fatlings each do bring; On Abel's gift the fire descends from skies, But no such sign on false Cain's offering; LIBR OF THOS With sullen hateful looks he goes his wayes.. There Abel keeps his sheep, no ill he thinks, His brother comes, then acts his fratricide, The Virgin Earth, of blood her first draught drinks, But since that time she often hath been cloy'd; The wretch with ghastly face and dreadful mind, Thinks each he sees will serve him in his kind, Though none on Earth but kindred near then could he find. Who fancyes not his looks now at the bar, His face like death, his heart with horror fraught, Nor male-factor ever felt like war, When deep despair, with wish of life hath fought, Branded with guilt, and crusht with treble woes, A vagabond to Land of Nod he goes, A city builds, that walls might him secure from foes. Who thinks not oft upon the Fathers ages, Their long descent, how nephew's sons they saw, The starry observations of those Sages, And how their precepts to their sons were law. How Adam sigh'd to see his progeny, Clothed all in his black sinfull livery, Who neither guilt, nor yet the punishment could fly. Our Life compare we with their length of dayes, In eating, drinking, sleeping, vain delight, And puts all pleasures vain unto eternal flight. When I behold the heavens as in their prime, And then the earth (though old) still clad in green, The stones and trees, insensible of time, Nor age nor wrinkle on their front are seen; If winter come, and greenness then do fade, A Spring returns, and they more youthful made; But Man grows old, lies down, remains where once he's laid. By birth more noble than those creatures all, That state obliterate he had at first. Nor youth nor strength, nor wisdom spring again, Shall I then praise the heavens, the trees, the earth, Because their beauty and their strength last longer? Shall I wish their, or never to had birth, Because they're bigger, and their bodyes stronger? Nay, they shall darken, perish, fade and dye, And when unmade, so ever shall they lye, But man was made for endless immortality. Under the cooling shadow of a stately elm Close sate I by a goodly River's side, Where gliding streams the rocks did overwhelm; A lonely place, with pleasures dignified. I once that lov'd the shady woods so well, Now thought the rivers did the trees excell, And if the sun would ever shine, there would I dwell. While on the stealing stream I fixt mine eye, Which to the long'd-for Ocean held its course, I markt nor crooks, nor rubs that there did lye Could hinder aught, but still augment its force: O happy Flood, quoth I, that hold'st thy race Nor is't enough, that thou alone may'st slide, But hundred brooks in thy clear waves do meet, So hand in hand along with thee they glide To Thetis' house, where all embrace and greet: So may we press to that vast mansion, ever blest. Look how the wantons frisk to taste the air, To see what trade the great ones there do drive, While musing thus with contemplation fed, And thousand fancyes buzzing in my brain, The sweet tongued Philomel percht o'er my head, And chanted forth a most melodious strain Which rapt me so with wonder and delight, I judg'd my hearing better than my sight, And wisht me wings with her a while to take my flight. O merry Bird (said I) that fears no spares, That neither toyles nor hoards up in thy barn, Feels no sad thoughts, nor cruciating cares To gain more good, or shun what might thee harm; Thy cloaths ne'er wear, thy meat is every where, The dawning morn with songs thou dost prevent, And warbling out the old, begins anew, Man's at the best a creature frail and vain, In knowledge ignorant, in strength but weak: Subject to sorrows, losses, sickness, pain, Each storm his state, his mind, his body break: From some of these he never finds cessation, But day or night, within, without, vexation, Troubles from foes, from friends, from dearest, near'st relation. And yet this sinful creature, frail and vain, This lump of wretchedness, of sin and sorrow, The Mariner that on smooth waves doth glide, |